What do you think of people who steal at supermarkets?

[chroniclesofj]

Have you seen it happen?
Doesn’t seem like police or security care

The people I have real issues with are those selling and buying stolen stuff "down the market"

she hadn’t even managed to hide it well in the carriage under the pram.

This is a well known tactic so they can say they placed it under there and forgot to take it out at the till.

If they hide it, it implies they intend to steal it.

The idea that shoplifting increases prices is an urban myth.

The UK has the lowest grocery prices in Europe because we have so many big supermarket rival chains compared to our more monopolised neighbours, and we also don’t have as many rules preventing importation which prevents higher prices for domestic products.

The Tesco boss gave his workers a 12p pay increase this year then gave himself a £10 million pound bonus. The Asda bosses gave themselves a total of £31 million in bonuses after staff received an 11p pay rise.

Groceries have gone up almost 200% since the pandemic, shoplifting has stayed stable for the last 20 years until only rising significantly in the last two years. As shoplifting increases, prices have actually increased less quickly after rapid rises. Loss still only makes up less than 1% of supermarket revenue.

The number one factor that actually contributes to the rising price of groceries are oil prices, and that will only be relieved by an end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Not everyone is stealing food for starving children I know, but when you consider those numbers, I see and say nothing. There are much more important things to worry about, which is why the police don’t care.

I used to work at a place where they gave free meals and groceries to anyone that came. There was no requirement to be eligible. The meals were of a good standard and the groceries included more than just basics. We had to be so careful with everything as so many of the service users would try to steal annything and everything that wasn’t locked up. It was shocking and depressing really.

Supermarkets replaced human cashiers with self-service checkouts which they knew perfectly well were an open invitation to theft. They made a hard-nosed commercial decision that the amount they saved on wages would more than offset the value of the increased ‘shrinkage’ to use the industry’s preferred euphemism

Given that, and the vast scale of profits made by the supermarkets, it’s hardly surprising that so many people evidently view stealing from them as fair game.

Well kleptomania can actually be a mental health issue. There are people that will steal something- anything- when they go to the shops. Even if it’s just a chocolate bar or whatever . Like I said upthread it happens at self service all the time, and the staff are stretched too thin to notice or care.

I was struggling once as a student to get any money together to buy tampons, so I put a box through as a petit pan on the self service machine so they’d be 25p. I can’t say I’m in the least bit sorry about that. I needed them, and I didn’t know what else to do.

You say that but if you look at shoplifting statistics, people with money are doing it more now. Because they see others doing it.

Ive never seen it happen so probably far to engrossed in my own shopping. I would not want to get involved. Now I rarely visit supermarkets and have all my groceries delivered.

They are criminals, like anybody else who breaks the law. If you are hungry you need to approach the proper channels for help not steal

Unfortunately I see it every day. I never thought we’d have to wear a body cam for our own safety but theft is completely out of control now and like it or not we all pay the price for it. It’s scary when a gang of young men come in and just blatantly clear the shelves and there’s nothing we can do because we don’t know if they have a knife or any other weapon. I don’t get paid enough to risk it and I’ve seen staff who’ve tackled shop lifters get disciplined for it. It’s very rarely a mother stealing to feed her child either, it’s 99.9% organised crime.

our local lidl now has a security guard from 3pm until 6pm each day (and school holidays) because the kids steal pastries and bottles of coke, kids whose parents are very angry when they get caught I should add, I saw the aftermath one day, these aren’t poor desperate youngsters, they are doing it for thrills

Again, I am not saying you are necessarily wrong. But you seem determined to suggest I definitely was and that there is no way she could have been a very poor young mother stealing food for her baby out of sheer desperation. I was there and I know what I saw, and I believe that to be what happened. As did the staff member, given the looks we exchanged. As I say, maybe she and I were wrong, but you seem incapable of accepting that maybe we weren’t.

I am not someone who is determined to always see the best in people and put an optimistic spin on things, I am in fact a pretty cynical person. But I am not sure why you seem so determined to think the worst. Do you really not believe that people ever steal out of poverty and desperation?

I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. That sounds really stressful.

ETA: I’m not sure how you can be certain it’s 99.9% organised crime. I imagine a significant proportion of it is just general non organised crime. That doesn’t change the fact that it must be frightening, though.

@CuriousKangaroo
^Again, I am not saying you are necessarily wrong.
But you seem determined to suggest I definitely was and that there is no way she could have been a very poor young mother stealing food for her baby out of sheer desperation. I was there and I know what I saw, and I believe that to be what happened. As did the staff member, given the looks we exchanged.^

If you genuinely thought she was desperate did you consider paying for what she was stealing yourself?

A researcher do you think ?

They are a utter disgrace.

Honestly, a lot of me doesn’t care. Shoplifting is an obvious risk of running a retail business. Retail has never existed without theft.

that said, I do think when it’s out of control it sends a message of lawlessness which does impact the rest of society. I also don’t want staff to be put in danger.

but tbh, I am not really in favour of police resources being spent on shoplifting either

I have already answered that question up thread.

This. It makes me cringe when people say shoplifting increases prices for everyone. Such a innocent naive idea

I see it regularly and have different opinions. There are people in need and there are chancers who can afford to pay but choose not too. The latter I cannot stand and they disgust me. They say it doesn't matter as they are stealing from big companies but the companies won't let their profits take a hit, they'll just put prices up. It is also the start of the moral decline of society. If people start thinking this is acceptable they'll move onto the next thing. I think people caught should he locked up overnight and publicly shamed as that would probably stop a lot of it.
There are also kids doing it and I think they need a good telling off. Kids did it when I was young too and I figure it is a right of passage but they do need to experience consequences.
On the other hand I think supermarkets are price gouging and that needs to be stopped.

Why on earth would someone approach someone and ask if they were stealing it then offer to pay ? That is just not realistic .

Retail shrinkage does increase prices

The way the police class it as organised crime in my area is if it’s purposely stolen to sell on. The worst part about it is they know the people doing it but just don’t have enough resources to tackle the problem. There’s always the ones that we don’t see but of the ones that do it blatantly it’s never because they haven’t eaten. I’ve been sat in my local pub when they’ve come in trying to sell it on, it doesn’t help when people buy it from them and create a demand for it.

I think that they are low life scum, as I do with any thieves. Being poor is no excuse. And, yes, I’ve been there. 🙄

Retail shrinkage is stock write off. As much as staff drop or destroy products, the public steals it. As much as the shop over order and throw away stock, the public steal it

the fact that some stock doesn’t create revenue isn’t about shoplifting.